With so many big names on the trade market ahead of next week’s NBA trade deadline, the Miami Heat could turn to their star to moonlight as a recruiter.
Bam Adebayo – a three-time All-Star and two-time Olympic gold medalist – has relationships across the league. When stars such as Kevin Durant and Donovan Mitchell considered joining Miami in the past, part of the attraction was the chance to play with Adebayo.
But with players like De’Aaron Fox, Zach LaVine and others potentially available before the Feb. 6 trade deadline, does Adebayo go out of his way to pitch them on playing for the Heat?
Adebayo says he waits for them to ask.
“I wait for the question,” Adebayo told the Miami Herald. “Obviously, if you’re intrigued by the situation, you’re going to ask anyway.”
Once approached, Adebayo doesn’t have a polished sales pitch. Rather, he tells them exactly what it’s like to play for the Heat, using words like “standards,” “annoying,” and “winning.”
“The thing is I’m telling you the whole truth. It’s not a recruiting pitch to me,” Adebayo said. “I’m telling you the truth. You’re going to get here, you know what it is. There is no BS, there is no, ‘I’m going to get my numbers.’ No, no, no. This is team basketball here. We’re going to play both sides of the basketball. So that’s 82 games, plus playoffs. I’m not sugarcoating anything. You make your decision from there.
“To me, if I consider you like family like De’Aaron, I’m not going to lie to you. You’re getting a coach that’s not going to let you go below your standard and sometimes that does get annoying. Sometimes that does rub you the wrong way. But it’s a coach that expects more out of you because he sees something. When you have a coach like that, you can’t take that for granted. There have been many coaches in some organizations that they’re there for a season. How are you supposed to bank equity with a coach who’s only there for a season, two seasons? You can’t really hone in and become something when it’s like that. For us, we got a coach that’s going to be here for a very long time that really cares about winning, but also cares about us.”
The Heat have a saying: We’re not for everybody.
Adebayo echoes that in his pitch. A player like Fox, coming from an unstable organization like the Kings, could relish the chance to play for the organization Adebayo described.
Click here for our post on why the Heat could be an attractive landing spot for Fox.